Scream Queens: "Pilot / Hell Week"Review

Scream Queens has a hell of a pedigree, and it completely lives up to it in its two-hour premiere.

Inspired by and paying homage to the classic "scream queen" horror films, the new FOX series follows the members and pledges of a sorority house with a dark past as a devil-masked serial killer murders them one-by-one. While that's a fairly standard horror movie premise, Scream Queens sets itself apart with its biting humor, sharp writing and impressive ensemble cast that's completely committed to playing the story as straight as possible.

The horror-comedy comes from Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan, the creative team behind Glee (Murphy and Falchuk also are the creators of American Horror Story and the forthcoming American Crime Story). While Scream Queens veers away from some of the high school drama and event episodes that came to dominate Glee, it still features some of their sniping social commentary about the way teens treat one another. It also allows Murphy and Falchuk to further mine their obsession with horror.

There are plenty of familiar horror story tropes here, like in American Horror Story, but they all feel fresh and fun. The series opens with a traumatic event that took place at sorority house Kappa Kappa Tau 20 years prior, which sets the tone for the rest of the series. In the flashback, a sorority member bleeds out in a bath tub after giving birth unexpectedly (she thought she just gained the freshman 15). Her superficial sorority sisters are more concerned about whether they'll miss dancing to TLC's "Waterfalls" than they are about her safety, and leave her to die.

The characters in the present are slightly less awful, but only barely. Grace Gardner (Skyler Samuels) is the obvious heroine as a young Kappa pledge who has a wholesome reason for joining the sorority, while Chanel Oberlin (Emma Roberts, in her best Queen Bitch mode) is the most despicable character in the show as the homophobic, racist president of Kappa Kappa Tau. Also up there are her KKT squad of Chanels (Abigail Breslin, Billie Lourd and Ariana Grande) and her douchebag boyfriend/frat boy Chad Radwell (Glen Powell).

Scream Queens doesn't present many of its characters as likable, but you can't help but enjoy them anyway. Even the most innocent, like Grace, can and should be considered as a possibility for the Red Devil killer, and not even death takes them off the list of suspects. But even with their true intentions unclear, the characters' shades of grey and likability come in from the performances, which explains why Murphy, Falchuk and Brennan made sure they assembled such a stellar cast.

Come in expecting to be impressed by Roberts as Chanel and OG scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis as Dean of Wallace University Cathy Munsch, but be prepared to be entertained by everyone in the cast. Standouts from the first two episodes are Nick Jonas as Boone, a member of the fraternity the Dollar Scholars; Lea Michele as Hester, a neckbrace-wearing KKT pledge who is obsessed with death; and Nasim Pedrad as Gigi Caldwell, the earnest, behind-the-times Kappa sorority chief who clearly has a secret. (Diego Boneta, Keke Palmer, Oliver Hudson and Niecy Nash also star, and all are great.)

On the spectrum from Glee to AHS, Scream Queens falls somewhere in the middle; it's not scary, and it's also not concerned with highlighting and resolving issues facing young people. Instead, it appropriately lets is writing do its commentary for it, be it about how terribly women talk to one another or about the sorority system or about horror movie stereotypes. By the cast fully committing to Murphy, Falchuk and Brennan's vision, the actors can trust that when they play their characters straight, the rest of the comedy will fall into place.

And it does so, really, really well. I'm completely on board with what I've seen in the two-hour pilot, and have little doubt that the rest of Season 1 will live up to this promise. (After that... well, hopefully Murphy and Falchuk can keep the magic going in Season 2 as well.) The biggest complaint with the series is that everyone will have to wait a whole week between episodes as viewers try to figure out who the Red Devil killer is (it's already been confirmed that the reveal will happen in the finale). There are so many questions we'll need resolved! What does the death 20 years ago have to do with the murders in the present? Is that baby a 20-year-old a student at Wallace University now? Is Grace actually as innocent as she seems? Here's hoping they all have satisfying answers.

The Verdict

Ryan Murphy has worked his TV magic again with a killer start to Scream Queens. From the acting to the costuming to the writing, everything about this concept and execution works. Scream Queens is as funny and self-aware as it needs to be to not bore audiences, but also offers up enough mystery and intrigue to keep even the biggest skeptic entertained. With only 13 episodes to go, the FOX series hopefully can maintain its tightly-plotted pace without losing the momentum the two-hour premiere kicked off.